A mathematical warm up tonight with odds, evens, high 5s and even some prime numbers before we all headed off to Emmaus. Splitting into two groups with Charlie helping to lead the second we made short work of the 1.5k distance.

On arrival, Xanne described how Emmaus provides accomodation and training for people who were previously homeless, helping them to get back into work again either in Emmaus' own shops, taking on PAT testing, house clearances or simply going on to find a job outside the community.

We were then given our task for the evening and amazingly Christmas had come early for Bristol Goodgym! We were to get all the Christmas decorations out of storage and sort them either for sale or for use in the shop displays.

Kait quickly saw the potential for a human chain to move the decorations to the ground floor and in no time we had groups sorting tinsel from baubles while sporting various festive garments and in some cases breaking into some Christmas singing!

Several people were tasked with test-assembling Christmas trees to make sure all the parts were there and it was heart-warming to see how these individuals quickly bonded with their trees. See the photos for evidence of this. Does Dave look proud of little Samyule? What about Liam - a little protective of Uncle Firn? And surely Lisa is particularly chuffed with baby Noel!

Another group tackled the largest of the trees, puzzling out all the colour coded branches - while Mel set about testing the Christmas lights to make sure they worked. Another group set to work decorating one of the trees .

By the end we had boxes of decorations ready for sale and trees all ready for display. With a festive group photo in the bag, we headed back to base, squeezing in a few step-ups and squats on the way back to help ensure we can all fit into our Christmas jumpers next month,

Bed up? Well, let me tell you a story ...

One damp night in November, a massive number of Goodgymmers assembled for a brilliant task at the brand new Bristol YMCA (thanks Emma for sending me this one!)

After a highly unconventional follow-my-leader warm-up around Queen Square the group headed off on a short run to the old Police station where the hostel was to be situated. The hostel is to combine both conventional accommodation and a number of beds for young people who have become homeless with one providing financial support for the other.

The builders were due to finish in a week or so all that remained was to move a trifling 99 flat packed bunk beds from the ground floor into the various dormitories ready to be assembled. After a quick intro from our host Ben, mattresses and bed frames quickly starting disappearing from their respective piles as an eager army of red GG worker ants busily ferried them up two floors and distributed them amongst the rooms.

This was fairly physical work as the frames were pretty heavy so it was all the more impressive to have completely cleared the ground floor area after 40 minutes on the task.

Of course, now all that remains is the the trifling matter of assembling 99 beds -so do join us on Saturday for part two if you can!

Goodgym York - challenge accepted

Having bumped into GG York trainer Egg over the weekend and been filmed taking part in the November press-up challenge I was keen for the rest of GG Bristol to show GG York what they were made of. And even after carting all those beds around, I am proud to say that everyone still had some energy to complete the 14 press ups that were due today! Top work everyone!!

Mel - GG Bristol Centurion

And finally, congratulations to Mel for reaching 100 good deeds today. This was celebrated in some style with a GG Bristol arch through which she duly ran - along with Clo who was celebrating 3rd placed female in the 10k last weekend ... and a few other random people who happened to be walking through Queen Square

Mel then duly donned the GG Centurion outfit and happily had brought plenty of cake to celebrate!

Tonight's litter picking task was supplied by Bristol Waste and indeed it appeared that the whole of Bristol's waste had been deposited behind just two bushes on a street in Redfield.

This task was truly a load of rubbish - the litter equivalent of sweeping everything in the entire house under the carpet.

With such a gargantuan task it was lucky that we had 24 of the very best Bristol Goodgym members on the job - including both battle-scarred veterans and some of our courageous new recruits. Dividing into teams of 4 or 5 we concentrated most of our forces on the bushes but were able to spare some of the remainder to tackle the rest of the street and a small children's playground.

Team Playground - Masters of Diplomacy

Team playground employed some excellent diplomacy, quickly winning the support of the families who were taking advantage of the longer evenings to relax amongst the swings and slides and receving enthusiastic offers of help from the children.

Team Street - Bringing the Muscle to the Party

Not content with collecting myriad bags full of litter the street teams succeeded in retrieving an entire discarded TV and bringing it to the specified point for collection.

Team Bush - making good on a TARDIS of Withering Sights

But through all of this the bushes never ceased in offering up their endless array of unusual and unwanted items.

Lindsey discovered a bucket half filled with cans, Alice discovered a toad in a rubbish-strewn gap that must surely have been the inspiration for the Star Wars waste compactor scene, Liam found the old womans shoe (though it is unclear what had happened to all her children so maybe she did know what to do after all), and George having come all the way from his home turf of Lambeth found Barney the purple dinosaur. Sadly, it appears that Barney's rock and roll lifestyle had finally caught up with him as he was found under the bush with a wide variety of cans and appeared to have let his once ripped physique ... get ripped.

All in all, in 30 minutes we collected over 25 bags of rubbish for collection and totally transformed the street for the residents. Fantastic work everyone!

After a pacey run back to base, there was just enough time for the early arrivals to do a fartlek circuit of Queen Square before everyone got down to some stretching. We congratulated all our members who ran last weekend - and particularly Charlie for running her first marathon in the hardest possible way, off road and up hill.

Congratulations Sarah - 50 Good Deeds!!

And last but not least, huge congratulations to Sarah for reaching 50 good deeds. Sarah is a true GG Bristol regular - cheer her here, or maybe buy her an Oreo or two. Thanks also to Richard for bringing one of the last two packets of pink wafers in all existence to help celebrate.

24 runners smashed a 6k run to help out at Bramble Hill Farm

A change of plan tonight after our original task had to be cancelled at the 11th hour.

No matter however as whilst we were really looking forward to a nice evening run out to St George to fill a skip (fear not - this has been rescheduled), Chris kindly stepped in to offer us the chance to head out to one of our favourite locations to help out at the farm.

Knowing what was in store for us we got warmed up with some dynamic farmyard stretches, choosing to shoo in some pigs and goats before shutting them in their pen, whilst welcoming two first-timers, Jonny and Dan, to the GoodGym gang.

The first group was led and marshalled by two of our GoodGym Olympians, Paul and Golden Girl Chloe who set off for the farm at a steady pace. My group, with Mel and Emma backmarking, opted for a more leisurely pace, but we kept up with the front group by way of some sneaky short cuts so that we all arrived at the farm around the same time.

Once there, Chris set us about our tasks, which included some weeding and digging in various fruit and vegetable beds - one of these was a patch of strawberries and there might just have been one or two fewer strawberries in the patch by the time we left.

The highlight however was the opportunity to spray the pigs with water, to cool them down in the hot weather and soon their grunts turned to squeals - not sure whether these were squeals of delight judging how they kept running away as the water hit them.

Despite having only a little time available to us, we did managed to pay a visit to the kid goats and another pig pen (with Richard proving most adept at feeding them with some of the nearby vegetation), and a rather lengthy group photo shoot thanks to a cat that couldn't quite decide whether it wanted to feature in the photo!

And then it was back to base where Paul lead us through some good stretches of our calves, hamstrings and quads, whilst we congratulated our GoodGym Olympians (Chloe, Paul, Matt and Gary), our triathletes (Alice and Jimmy) and marshals (Richard and Chloe). Back in Vivo we also cheered Mel who was featured in this months Newsmail about Coach Running.

Big thanks to Chris for arranging for us to come and visit the farm tonight - it was the location of my very first GoodGym run and is still one of my favourites.

Thanks also to Paul, Chloe, Mel and Emma for helping us to get there and back in one piece.

And thanks to all of you for coming and getting the job done - a nice run and a great task on a lovely evening!